


Numbers Don't Lie

by SuburbanSun



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bets & Wagers, Denial, Drinking, F/M, FitzSimmons Secret Santa, Non-SHIELD AU, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5731096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a simple bet-- who can score the most phone numbers over the course of one night out at the bar? </p>
<p>The thing is, when it comes to Jemma and Fitz, winning is subjective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Numbers Don't Lie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [multifandomcircusfreak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifandomcircusfreak/gifts).



> Written for losingfitzsimmons/multifandomcircusfreak as a pinch-hit for the Fitzsimmons Network's Secret Santa exchange! The prompt was "a very competitive Christmas."
> 
> Sorry it too you so long to get a gift, dear, and hope you like it!

Jemma stretched her arms up above her, letting her head loll to either side until she felt a satisfying pop in her neck. With a yawn, she glanced over at the digital clock on the shelf above her lab bench.

“Two thirty!” she muttered. The middle of the night had snuck up on her, again, as it tended to do anytime she had a big project working. Rubbing the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, she frowned down at the notes in front of her. Her results weren’t getting any more clear as the night progressed. Perhaps a good-- _decent_ \-- night’s sleep would help.

On her way out of the now-empty biochem lab, she flicked off the lights and pulled on her coat. It was always eerie walking down the halls of MyoLabs so late at night, even if she _had_ gotten used to it.

Once she’d exited the building, her eyes were drawn up and to the left out of habit. Sure enough, there was only one window still lit up on the face of the building. Jemma shifted her weight from one foot to the other, vacillating as she looked between said window and her car, one of two left in the parking lot.

With a sigh, she swiped her ID card and made her way back into the darkened building.

Scant minutes later, she leaned against the doorway to the engineering lab with a smirk.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she said, startling Fitz at his lab bench. He huffed, pushing his safety goggles up onto his forehead in a way that made his curls stick up amusingly.

“How many times have I told you not to scare me like that, Simmons? You could ruin hours of careful work.”

She just chuckled and stepped further into the room. “Still wouldn’t make up for the time I spilled potentially hazardous chemicals on myself because you’d propped up a mop to scare me in the supply closet.”

His look was part chastised, part aggrieved. “That was one time. And the chemicals _weren’t_ hazardous, as it turned out.”

“Everything has the potential to be hazardous, Fitz.” She sidled up to the lab bench across from him, resting both elbows on it and setting her chin on one fist. “Are you finishing up here soon?”

“Getting there.” He bit his lip and shuffled through a few papers absentmindedly. “Just… a few more… a-ha.”

“Fitz, you may be a genius, but you’re still human, and humans need sleep to function.”

“Pot, kettle, black, et cetera,” he mumbled, eyes still on his notes.

“You work too much,” she said.

“ _We_ work too much,” he corrected, and she hummed her agreement. Ever since he’d started at MyoLabs (a mere two months into her tenure there), they’d been kindred colleagues-- both the first to arrive and last to leave their respective labs, both just as happy to passionately debate a problem over lunch or to sit together in silence, reading research journals and jotting down ideas. The biochem and engineering departments had never before been so collaborative, several of their superiors had commented with impressed expressions on their faces.

Occasionally, Jemma looked at her life-- long hours put in at the lab, coming home to an empty apartment, no social life to speak of-- and wondered if she was happy. Then she’d get a text from Fitz with a brilliant solution to a problem they’d been discussing, or even just an invitation to break for lunch, and she’d dismiss the concern entirely. She loved what she did. She loved who she did it with.

Still, enough was enough.

“Time to go home, Fitz.” She gently tugged at the papers in his hands until he let go, ignoring his pout as she put them away more neatly than he would have. “We’ll be back in just a few short hours, you realize.”

“I know,” he said, his words broken by a sudden yawn. She knew she’d won. They walked out of the lab, then the building, side by side, said a sleepy goodbye at their cars, and then parted ways.

When Jemma let herself into her cold, dark apartment, she sighed, unable to shake the feeling that she’d left something important back at the lab.

 

\---

 

“Tuna or turkey?” Jemma held one wrapped sandwich in either hand, knowing it was her best bet at dragging Fitz away from his work for lunch.

He eyed them hopefully. “No prosciutto?”

“Ugh, Fitz! You’re going to die of a heart attack before you’re 30, and I’d quite like to keep you alive.” She waved both sandwiches closer to his face, and he took the turkey with half a smile.

“Break room or 4th floor?”

“Mm, 4th floor today.”

He nodded, gathering up his phone and patting his pocket to ensure his ID badge was secure before following her out of the lab. They chatted amiably about their mornings as they waited for the elevator, briefly lowered their voices to gossip about the lab tech who got off at the 3rd floor, and had just gotten to asking about each other’s weekend plans when they reached their favorite bench, the one in the alcove behind the stairwell that overlooked the woods that ran along the side of the building. They spread out their sandwiches on the bench between them and seamlessly continued their conversation.

“So no plans?” he asked around a bite of turkey and swiss.

“I may do some reading in bed. Is that a plan?”

Fitz laughed, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Simmons, are we boring?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I think we might be.”

“I used to have a social life, you know,” he said after a moment. She couldn’t help her incredulous laugh, but she at least had the decency to look abashed before he continued. “I did! Sort of. In graduate school, I had a few friends I’d go down to the pub with every weekend.”

“Oh, I’m sure you were quite popular,” she said, smiling fondly at his scowl.

“I resent your sarcastic tone. But… no, I really wasn’t, was I?” His grin was the self-deprecating one she’d seen so often when he talked about himself in a non-scientific capacity. “Bet _you_ were, though,” he said, sounding sincere.

“I used to have monthly girls’ nights with a few friends, before I moved here for this job. I’d go on the occasional date here and there. Then somehow, I never got around to meeting anyone new here in town.”

“Except me.”

“Of course.”

“Do you wish you had more of a life? More friends? Um, dated more?”

She snorted a laugh. “Or at all. Yeah, I suppose that would be nice. You?”

Fitz picked at the corner of his napkin, pulling the two plies of paper apart. “Yeah, guess so.”

An idea occurred to her, something that might give them the impetus they needed to remedy the situation they’d both found themselves in. “Then let’s make a bet.” She balled up the wrapper of her finished sandwich and set it neatly on her napkin on the bench.

“What kind of a bet?”

She thought it over for a moment, then nodded decisively. “Tomorrow night at the bar across the street-- which, I might add, is the only place we ever _do_ go, when we actually go anywhere. It’s the big Christmas-themed pub crawl, so it’s certain to be busy.”

“And?”

“We’ll make it our mission to meet people. Whichever of us gets the most numbers by the end of the evening wins.”

Fitz barked out a laugh, bringing a hand up to scratch at his jaw, and Jemma frowned.

“What’s so funny? You don’t think I can get a lot of numbers?” At that, his eyes widened and his mouth flapped open like a fish.

“No, that’s not--”

_Who does he think he’s dealing with?_ “Because I can get numbers. Even if I am a bit rusty. Well, perhaps more than a bit, actually.”

“No, Simmons, I--”

Jemma leaned toward him, jabbing her index finger gently against his chest. “You’re going down, Leopold Fitz.” He sat there with his mouth open for a long moment, then let his shoulders drop. He nodded slowly, his eyes back on his now-shredded napkin.

“You’re on, Simmons.”

She nodded once. _This will be a piece of cake_.

 

\--

 

“Terms of the bet,” Jemma began, turning on her barstool to fully face Fitz. He smiled at her, but it was his ‘I’m humoring you’ smile, and she narrowed her eyes. “Are you going to take this seriously, Fitz?”

“Of course!” He held up both hands in front of him. “I’d never not take a Jemma Simmons bet seriously.”

“Good man,” she said, and he bit back a grin. “Terms of the bet. Item one-- we have until the bar closes tonight at 2 a.m. to get as many phone numbers as we can.”

“Got it.”

“Item two-- All numbers must be written down on paper, by the other party. No cheating by inputting random numbers into a phone, and this way, we’ll recognize each other’s handwriting if one of us decides to get a bit sneaky.”

He raised his eyebrows at her, taking a long sip of his beer. “Are you planning to get sneaky, Simmons?” he asked in a low voice.

Her breath caught for a moment, and she had to clear her throat to stay on track. “Of course not. I’d just like to safeguard against any… funny business.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Item three-- the final count will be tallied by a third party-- Daisy the bartender-- and whichever of us got the most phone numbers is declared the winner.”

“Which means--”

“If I win, you have to be my chauffeur for a full week. Pick me up for work, drive me on any errands as I see fit, take me to any social engagements I choose to attend…”

Fitz grimaced, taking another swig of beer. “And if I win, you’re my personal chef for a week. Breakfasts, lunches, dinners and the occasional snacks.”

She rolled her eyes. “They’ll be healthy snacks, so you’ll hate them.”

“Are you acknowledging that you might not win?”

“Of course not!” Privately, she’d wondered just how rusty her social skills had become, but she’d never let him know that. “In any case, we both win regardless of the outcome, because we’ll meet new people, and then we won’t spend all our time in the lab or alone at home.”

“I like the lab,” he said, one thumb worrying the corner of the label on his bottle of beer.

“I do too, Fitz,” she said softly. “But don’t you want something more in your life?”

He met her eyes then, blinking at her a few times before nodding slowly.

“So it’s a good plan, isn’t it?”

He hesitated, but nodded again. “Sure.”

Jemma smiled, wrapping her hand around her cocktail and holding it out between them. “Let’s toast on it, then. To tonight!”

His beer bottle clinked against her glass. “To tonight,” he answered, and she held his gaze as they both sipped their drinks. Licking her lips quickly, she swiveled around on her stool to face the rest of the bar. She spotted a tall man in a Santa hat talking to a shorter man with a well-groomed beard, and set her sights on one (or both) of them.

_Let the games begin._

 

\---

 

By 9:30, Jemma had the phone numbers of six different men tucked into the pocket of her jeans. She smiled smugly to herself as she leaned her elbows on the bar, waiting for Daisy to mix her a new drink. She doubted Fitz had been quite so successful.

She craned her neck to look around the bar, searching out a familiar curly head to no avail.

“Hey, Daisy, have you seen Fitz around lately?”

Daisy squeezed a lime into Jemma’s glass and pushed it across the bar. Her hands moved on to another drink order while her attention remained on Jemma.

“Hmm, maybe twenty minutes ago? He ordered another beer and walked off.” She stuck a pair of cocktail straws into a glass and passed it to another patron. “He’s been spending a _lot_ of time at the bartonight, though.”

_That must mean he’s buying drinks for an awful lot of women._ Jemma frowned. “You don’t think he’ll win, do you?”

Daisy snorted. “Seventeen fifty.”

“Please, Daisy, there aren’t nearly that many people in this bar.”

“No, sorry, that’s how much this guy’s drinks are.” Daisy took the cash the man offered and counted it. “No, but Fitz? No way. I’m surprised he even agreed to your little bet.”

“Why’s that?”

Tucking a stack of bills into the cash register, Daisy tossed an incredulous look over her shoulder before laughing. “If you don’t know, then I’m certainly not going to tell you.”

_What on Earth does that mean?_ Jemma was about to ask for clarification when a large group of women, all wearing ugly Christmas sweaters over miniskirts, approached the bar. Daisy shrugged in apology as she began to take their drink orders.

Jemma surveyed the women, wondering suddenly if she should have dressed up a bit more for the evening. She’d thought her green blouse was festive, but she might have been able to scrounge up a miniskirt from the back of her closet, or slip into a pair of heels instead of her black flats.

She wondered if Fitz would get any of those women’s numbers. Her frown was back, and she wasn’t sure why.

“Hi, I’m Eric. Can I buy you a drink?” said a voice beside her. She swept the thoughts out of her mind, turning her full attention back to the game, and to the _very_ aesthetically pleasing man beside her.

“Hi Eric,” she said, subtly setting her still-mostly-full cocktail on an empty barstool behind her. “I’d love that, thanks.”

She had a bet to win, after all.

 

\---

 

  
At 11:45, Jemma had nine numbers to show for her evening-- ten, if you counted the slip of paper so smudged she couldn’t read it (which, out of fairness, she did not). With no insight into Fitz’s success, she had no idea how to feel about her progress. Still, she’d had a few good conversations with the men she’d met.

Well, a couple of the conversations had been nice. Most had been banal and repetitive. At a few desperate moments, only the thrill of the game kept her from slipping away to find Fitz and dragging him into a booth in the back of the room so they could talk about something that actually interested her.

She was heading for the bathroom when she finally ran into him for the first time in a few hours. He was leaving the men’s room, and his eyes seemed to light up when he spotted her.

“Simmons!”

She grinned back at him, pulling him by the elbow into the little alcove that housed the jukebox and a cigarette machine. She leaned back against the jukebox and he stood facing her.

“How’s your night going?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the din of the bar.

“Fine,” he said, also a bit loud. “How about yours?”

She shrugged one shoulder playfully. “That’s for you to find out.”

He sucked in a breath, then opened his mouth to say something. As he did, a pair of women stumbled by on their way to the ladies’ room, nearly knocking into him. He took a quick step forward to avoid a collision, which put him right in front of Jemma, their chests nearly brushing. She suddenly felt warm all over, and wondered if Daisy or her manager had turned up the heat in the bar for some reason. It _was_ winter outside, she supposed.

“Watch it,” he muttered after the women, his head still turned to glare at them. When he met Jemma’s gaze again, his eyes widened as he seemed to suddenly realize just how close they were standing. He swallowed as he took a hasty step back. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she said, voice sounding a bit hoarse to her own ears--perhaps there were people illegally smoking in the bar. “Um… what were we discussing?”

“Ah. The bet, I think?” His eyes looked so much bluer than she would have expected in the bar’s dim light.

“Oh. Right. The bet.” She cleared her throat. “So, you’ve gotten a lot of numbers so far, then?”

He only hummed in response, pressing his lips together.

“You’ve only got another two hours, you know.”

He glanced down at his watch, then took a breath. “You know… if you wanted to concede defeat, we could always call it now and… I don’t know, go get cheese fries, or something.”

_Concede defeat? Ha!_ “Your cheese fries will have to wait, Fitz.” She patted him on the chest, and his eyes drifted down to watch her hand. “We’ve got people to meet!”

With a grin, she side-stepped out from between him and the jukebox and made her way to the ladies’ room.

“Yeah, well,” he called after her. “You can make me cheese fries every day when you’re my chef next week.”

With one hand on the door handle, she turned back to look at him. “In your dreams,” she said, and winked.

Once inside the bathroom, she looked at herself in the mirror and her bravado faltered. Since when did Jemma Simmons _wink_?

 

\---

 

The last hour of the night was a bust for Jemma. She tried to introduce herself to several aesthetically-appealing men, but everyone seemed too drunk to bother with pleasantries. She was glad she’d alternated cocktails and water over the course of the night.

At 1:45, after yet another man slurred his name and spilled his drink on her shoes, she decided it was time to give up. She took a seat at Daisy’s bar, which was much less crowded than before, and pulled her thirteen scraps of paper out of her pocket, laying them out neatly.

“So was the night a success?” Daisy asked, pouring two shots of whiskey. She pushed one toward Jemma and kept the other for herself.

“Not sure,” Jemma said, wrinkling her nose as she held up the shot glass. “That’s entirely dependent on Fitz.” She clinked her glass against Daisy’s, tapped the bottom against the bar, and downed the shot with minimal grimacing.

Daisy laughed, stacking the now-empty shot glasses. “Whether your night was good or bad depends on Fitz, is what you’re saying.”

Jemma tilted her head to the side, arranging the slips of paper in front of her in alphabetical order. “Mmhmm.” She looked up to see Daisy’s doubtful expression. “Because of the bet.”

“Oh, right,” Daisy said dryly. “The bet.”

_Alphabetical by first name or by last name?_ But not every man had written down his last name, so that was a foolish question. _First name it is._

“Why’d you give up, anyway? There are a few precious minutes left before closing.”

Jemma shrugged. “Being social gets a bit tiring, doesn’t it?” Daisy laughed in agreement, kneeling down to start the dishwasher before popping back up.

“Looks like he might not think so,” she said, her gaze on something over Jemma’s shoulder. Jemma turned around to see Fitz leaning against the wall on the other side of the room, arms crossed, talking to a pretty woman with auburn hair and a pair of elf ears on. The woman laughed at something Fitz said, reaching out with one hand to touch his elbow, and Jemma turned around quickly. She suddenly felt like that last shot of whiskey hadn’t quite agreed with her.

“If Fitz wants to continue up until the last minute, that’s his prerogative,” said Jemma primly. She began to reorder her slips of paper by area code.

Daisy merely groaned, disappearing into the bar’s back room.

So Jemma sat, checking her watch every minute or so, determinedly not looking over her shoulder, until it was finally 2 a.m. When the timer she’d set on her phone went off, she turned to look for Fitz, but he was already there, sliding onto the bar stool beside her. Daisy appeared again, poured him a whiskey shot of his own (and another one for herself), then stepped out from behind the bar to help the bouncers shoo any stragglers out onto the street.

“So? How’d you do?” Jemma asked, watching as Fitz drank the shot of whiskey. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as it went down, drawing her eyes for a moment.

“You first,” he said as he set the glass back down. He surveyed the slips of paper on the bartop in front of her, pressing his lips together again like he had during their earlier conversation. He nodded, eyes drifting back to his shot glass, which he rolled back and forth between his fingers. “You win,” he said.

Jemma’s brow furrowed. “How do you know? We haven’t even counted yours yet.”

“Just trust me on this one, Simmons.”

“But-- no, we’re supposed to have an official third party-- namely Daisy-- count each of our spoils. We can’t just _change_ the terms of the bet, Fitz.” She looked behind her to see that Daisy was shaking the shoulder of a man who’d fallen asleep in a booth up front. She squinted at him, trying to recognize if he was one of the men she’d met, and winced when she determined that he was. She slid ‘Dave (497) 352-2595’ into a separate pile. “Besides, I saw the way that redhead was flirting with you just now,” she said, her voice sounding oddly thin. “If that’s anything to go by, I’m sure you did quite well for yourself tonight.”

“I don’t think we need Daisy to count. Just let me know what time to pick you up in the mornings next week, and--”

“Fitz, that’s not the way we discussed it!”

“Just leave it, Simmons!” He finally looked up at her and away from the shot glass, which he set back on the bar with a thump. He looked like he wanted to apologize, but then shook his head quickly. “I’m going to the restroom, and then let’s get out of here, yeah? Get out of Daisy’s hair?”

Jemma watched him walk away until he disappeared around the corner, then turned back to the bar with a confused huff. Daisy, who had just returned, quirked an eyebrow at her.

“He said I win.”

“So… isn’t that a good thing? Why do you look like your favorite element just got removed from the Periodic Table?”

“They’d _never_ remove Phosphorus from the Periodic Table, Daisy, don’t be ridiculous.” Jemma bit her lip, tossing another look over her shoulder at the hallway leading to the restrooms. “I don’t know, though. He wouldn’t even show me the numbers he got. Don’t we need all the results before coming to a conclusion?”

Daisy gave her a sympathetic look. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“Fitz probably didn’t want to show you the numbers he got because he probably didn’t _get_ any numbers.”

_What?_ “That can’t be true. I saw him talking to that redhead. She definitely looked interested.” She was beginning to feel a bit affronted on Fitz’s behalf. Did Daisy have so little faith in him? “And why wouldn’t Fitz be able to get all the numbers he wanted, anyway? He’s incredibly smart, and handsome. He’s quite the catch. Certainly the most worthwhile man to set foot in this bar tonight.”

Daisy smirked. “Sounds like you should give him _your_ number.”

“What? Fitz already has my number.”

“Exactly,” said Daisy, speaking slowly and clearly. “Maybe he didn’t get any numbers tonight because _he already has the number he most wanted_.”

Jemma felt a swoop in her stomach at Daisy’s words, like she was riding a rollercoaster, and she suddenly felt overheated again. “You mean…”

“Duh.”

But that couldn’t be true. He hadn’t expressed any real interest in her before (though he did always seem content to spend his free time with her). And he’d gone along with the bet to begin with (though it had been her idea). Jemma stared at an undefined spot behind the bar as her heart sped up.

“Only question is...” said Daisy. “If he’s the biggest catch in this bar… then what are you gonna do with all those slips of paper in front of you, hmm?” She nodded meaningfully behind Jemma, indicating Fitz’s impending return.

All in the time it took for Fitz to cross the room, Jemma’s mind flitted from one image to another-- from the two of them laughing on their 4th floor bench, to late nights in the lab, to his blue eyes on hers as he nearly pressed her up against the jukebox in the hallway, to the sick feeling in her stomach as she’d watched another girl flirt with him. She laughed, breathy and incredulous. How had she never noticed it before?

“Ready to go?” he said over her shoulder. She stayed facing forward for another hesitant moment before making her decision.

Jemma swept all thirteen slips of paper in front of her into a pile, crumpling them into a tight ball and tossing it over the bar to make a perfect basket in Daisy’s garbage can.

“Simmons?” said Fitz, a note of confusion in his voice. Well, she couldn’t have that. She spun around on her stool, and after spending a few spare seconds just looking at him with new eyes, she grasped him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him down into a kiss.

He was shocked at first, clear by the way he stiffened and let out a surprised grunt, but by the time she’d slid her hand up into his hair, her fingernails gently scratching against his scalp, he’d found his footing. He kissed her earnestly, one hand cupping her jaw and the other resting on her hip as he stepped closer between her knees. He sucked her bottom lip between his, scraping lightly with his teeth, and she wondered why they’d spent so many months not doing this every chance they got.

Finally, after a few increasingly insistent _‘ahems’_ from Daisy, they broke apart, foreheads resting against each other. Her breathing was fast and heavy, and it satisfied her competitive nature to see that his was, too.

“Where did that come from?” he asked once he’d gotten his breath back.

“Our official third party helped me realize that… maybe we’ve both won the bet.” She smiled up at him as her fingers drifted down along his jaw and neck. His answering grin was blinding, and only made her want to kiss him again, and again and again, but perhaps last call in a dingy bar with the lights up wasn’t the time or place.

She hopped off her barstool and took him by the hand, waving gratefully at Daisy without breaking her gaze away from Fitz. She began to lead him out of the bar. “What would you say to late night cheese fries?”

“I’d say, ‘I thought you’d never ask’.”

This time, she couldn’t resist, so she stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. His hand, gentle on the back of her head, held her in place for a longer, deeper kiss.

“Simmons?” he asked as he pulled away.

“Mmhmm?”

“Does this mean I don’t have to be your chauffeur next week?”

She laughed, pulling him toward the exit with both arms wrapped around one of his. “Of course you do. But I suppose I could throw in a dinner or two.”

“I could live with that.”

“Possibly breakfast too.” His jaw fell open, and she smirked. “But for now?”

“Yeah?”

“Cheese fries.”

**Author's Note:**

> Want to chat on Tumblr? I'm [unbreakablejemmasimmons]() over there!


End file.
